


mind marked in indelible ink

by yunmin



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Drawing, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Survivor Guilt, Suspect Coping Mechanisms, War is hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 16:51:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12963975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunmin/pseuds/yunmin
Summary: Wedge keeps a notebook of flimsi and a real ink-pen in the pocket of his flightsuit at all times, and he doodles in it when he can. It keeps his hands busy in meetings, at least, when he finds it difficult to stay concentrating and listen no matter how hard he tries. Before long, he’s built up a book of sketches of the upper brass, everyone who comes to brief them. He knows the way their ships are built from observing them, putting pen to paper and marking out lines and shadows where the seams of metal fit, finding a way to represent them cleanly.





	mind marked in indelible ink

**Author's Note:**

> For an anon tumblr prompt; “Wedge has a notebook with rather good pen sketches of everything (he makes them seldom in minutes between battles and duties). Luke occasionally finds it.” This fic does include that, but it also includes an ode to mental health woes, so please tread carefully – Wedge doesn’t always have the best time in this fic.

Wedge isn’t sure quite where he picked up the habit. He was always known for scribbling in things, over things, doing anything he could to keep his hands busy. When he’d decided that he wanted to be an architect, it had turned into a useful study, observing people from life, places, things.

So he keeps a notebook of flimsi and a real ink-pen in the pocket of his flightsuit at all times, and he doodles in it when he can. It keeps his hands busy in meetings, at least, when he finds it difficult to stay concentrating and listen no matter how hard he tries. Before long, he’s built up a book of sketches of the upper brass, everyone who comes to brief them. He knows the way their ships are built from observing them, putting pen to paper and marking out lines and shadows where the seams of metal fit, finding a way to represent them cleanly.

.

“How’d you get away with it?” Hobbie Klivian whispers sharply, when Wedge pulls the notebook out during a briefing and balances it on his knee to try and capture Jan Dodonna’s serious face.

They’d told him to stop once, and Wedge had spent a week in briefings being a constant figit, leg bouncing up and down restlessly, the sound of his boot hitting the floor echoing through the briefing room. He’d not taken in a single word they’d said. A near-miss with two fighters later, and everyone had agreed to rescind the restriction.

Let Wedge keep his coping mechanisms, because when they work, they make him one of the finest pilots the Rebellion has seen yet.

“I’m just that good,” Wedge replies, like if he says it it will be a fact.

.

There’s a boy in this briefing with the most radiant golden hair and stunning vibrant blue eyes, and Wedge’s fingers are itching to draw him. But the black ink in his pen would never do this boy justice, and the mood in the briefing room is electric enough that Wedge is pulled to attention.

Everyone knows this is the big one. This is where the Rebellion with stand or fall, and the weight is born on the shoulders of starfighter pilots, on single-man craft. They are the underdogs, and apparently the solution to beating the Empire’s greatest weapon is to put a proton torpedo down an exhaust port.

Wedge manages to get the gist of the briefing, but the boy besides him is distracting. Wedge finds himself using his eyes to trace the boy’s features, wondering if he can commit them to memory well enough to get the boy down later. It’s never the same as drawing from life, but Wedge isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to capture this boy anyway.

He sparkles with something more.

.

In his grief, Wedge tries to draw everyone who flew that day. He pulls the pictures from his mind, desperately trying to get it down before he forgets how Biggs’ mouth used to curve as he smiled, how Piggy’s cheeks wobbled, how Dreis’s eyes were strong and worn after years of service. He tears holes in the paper of his notebook where he tries to get the ink down too quick, drawing too fast to try and get these things out of his head, the faces of the twenty-one pilots who went to their deaths that fateful day.

He doesn’t draw in meetings any more. The distraction doesn’t work like it used to; now, when he draws, he gets lost in it, lost in his grief. Instead, he dedicates himself to using every ounce of his brain power to keep his concentration on what’s in front of him, to keep the ghosts from bleeding in at the edges of his memory. Luke takes to sitting as close to Wedge as he can manage, his entire body lined up by Wedge’s side, giving Wedge something to focus on. He’ll still tap his hands over anything he can get – he starts making sure he brings caf to the meetings just so he can play with the mug, drum his fingers over the sides of it.

Narra drags him aside one day, having noticed Wedge’s nervous habits. He asks Wedge if he’s fit to fly. Wedge says he is, without hesitation. Narra gives him a look of complete disbelief, hauls him into the sims for three hours until Wedge vapes him four times in a row.

He understands Narra’s concern, but flying is the only thing he’s ever done where there isn’t something eating at the back of his brain. It’s instinctive. His ship feels like an extension of himself, and his mind is clear, and he can see what he needs to do with a clarity he isn’t blessed with anywhere else in his life.

He feels free, up there amongst the stars.

His brain is definitely wired a little differently, he knows that now. He has to have a full medical work-up every three months, and see a counsellor every one to retain his flight clearance. He’s constantly on the edge of having it revoked, of being told that he can’t fly anymore. If there wasn’t a war on, Wedge doubts he’d be allowed to fly. He doesn’t tell anyone about it. It’s just who he is.

When they give Skywalker a squadron, he asks Wedge to be his second. Immediately, the panic starts eating away at Wedge’s bones, but he chokes out a yes. Because he can do this. He stands alongside Luke and Narra in that first briefing that they give, hands behind his back, a thumb stroking the palm of the other, and suddenly knows that he can.

.

It’s a lot easier to give a briefing than to listen to one.

Luke is a brilliant CO who hasn’t the first clue how to do all the behind the scenes work a squadron requires; Wedge can do it all but only when he’s reminded and presented with a list of exactly what needs doing. They find themselves without the requisite parts, supplies and weapons a couple of times in those first few months, before they work it out between them.

Wedge picks up drawing again, though now it’s often as he files datawork, allowing himself five minutes every time he completes a new task to put a few more lines down. Luke becomes his favourite subject, often because he’s the only person in the room when Wedge gets out his pen these days. If he notices Wedge scribbling away, he doesn’t say anything. Luke’s good at that, at knowing when to intervene and when to keep his head out of other people’s business. He’s inexhaustible sunshine, but he knows that not everyone wants that all the time.

Wedge learns Luke, in that time, learns the curl of his hair, the curve of his nose, the dimple on his chin. The hollows of his cheeks as they come into sharp lines as he grows a little older. He’s a pleasure to draw, in every way.

Wedge catches himself staring. No one else does; Wedge has a reputation for a focused gaze, for holding his eyes on something too long, and everyone lets it pass on him where they wouldn’t necessary let it on anyone else. But he’s drawn to Luke, the soft smile he always has on his face, specially for Wedge at the end of a long day.

Wedge probably shouldn’t be surprised that one day he can’t quite clamp his impulsiveness down quickly enough. Kissing Luke is like clear skies after rain, cleansing and beautiful and oh so right.

Luke kisses back.

.

Everything is fine until it isn’t.

.

Eventually, something always breaks. That’s the reality of life. Wedge can count the fractures in his life, retrospectively, awareness of them only coming after the fact.

This one creeps up on him. He stops sleeping properly, waking up in fits and starts during the night and then wide awake before his alarm goes off. That goes unnoticed because everyone else is doing it too. He develops a fit of short temper, but again, half the Rebellion is running on a hair trigger, and Wedge is _fine_ as long as he only talks to his squadron and certain members of High Command. He’s back to fidgeting, and his pen strokes never land quite the way he wants them too, and the shots he fires don’t either, and his X-Wing feels clunky in his hands, directionless and aimless.

The war isn’t going well. It’s turned everything upside down, every person this way and that. Any semblance of a routine has been thrown out of order.

And with it goes the rest of Wedge’s sanity.

Not that anyone realises that until they find him, tearing apart his X-Wing, shredding wires with his bare hands as he tries to dig deeper into it to fix a single switch that won’t light up properly. In his frustration, he’s torn away half the cabling that makes his dashboard work in the process, smashed a piece of glass, and bent several tools out of shape.

He’s cursing up a storm and he’s practically vibrating with excess energy as he tears things apart, pulling out to look for a tool, finding one, smashing it repeatedly into the box before deciding it’s satisfactory, and returning with it. Luke, Hobbie and Tycho watch, wondering who spirited their friend away in the night and replaced him with the half-version of himself. “Wedge, are you alright?” Luke asks.

“I’m fine,” Wedge forces out, in perfectly level tones, almost sounding like himself only he clearly isn’t.

“Wedge, do you want to come out of there? Whatever’s going on one of the mechanics can fix it,” Hobbie says. Concern spreads all over his face; he knows that there’s history with Wedge, something that means commanding officers have a tendency to watch him like a hawk, but he’s never been sure what. But Wedge is clearly not alright. He doesn’t respond to Hobbie at all. Hobbie draws back, letting Luke approach Wedge, and tells Tycho to go for medical help. This is beyond them.

“Wedge.” Luke crouches besides him. “Come on. Lets go get breakfast – have you had breakfast?”

“I don’t want breakfast, I want this to _work_ _—_ _”_ A broken sob enters Wedge’s voice, and Luke puts an arm around Wedge, wanting to help soothe his friend, a man he cares for more than that. Wedge throws Luke off, violently, not caring about what hurt he does. Luke furrows his brow. “It doesn’t, and I need it to, cause I can’t fly without it—” Luke doesn’t mention the fact that Wedge’s X-Wing was fit for service the last time he saw it, and very much is not now. “Why won’t it work?”

Wedge collapses into violent, heaving sobs. Luke, wary of how his touch had been taken earlier, is cautious in how he moves, but this time when he wraps an arm around Wedge, Wedge falls into the embrace. Luke just holds him, and then slowly removes the tools from his hand, fingers grazing over all the little cuts Wedge has given himself in his path to destruction.

He manages to help Wedge up. A tall women in her forties with a medical insignia on her uniform is standing beside Tycho, her arms crossed. When Wedge looks up at her, he sighs. “I know,” he says, before she can say anything. He’s two days off his standing appointment with her, when all this would have come out eventually.

She shakes her head. “My office, now. Skywalker, which of you is Skywalker?” Luke raises his hand, and she nods, like she’s not at all surprised. “You too.”

.

Wedge’s counsellor, who’s name is Dr Elan Monri, has a two-one-bee droid waiting in her office to clean up all the damage that he’s managed to do to himself. It cleans the cuts on his hands, and bandages the worst ones. Luke sits close to him, still not really understanding what’s going on, whilst Dr Monri hauls a reasonably thick flimsi file out of a locked cabinet.

“Wedge, are you back with us?” Dr Monri asks, her voice perfectly calm and level. Her chair is pulled out in front of her desk. Luke and Wedge share a sofa that runs along one wall of her office. Wedge nods. “First things first; I’m revoking your flight clearance.”

“I figured.” Wedge is surprisingly accepting of that fact; given what Luke saw, he thought for sure his friend would rail against it. “Am I off active duty as well?”

“Not yet. A repeat of an incident like this morning’s, and it will be considered.”

“Excuse me—” Luke butts in. He thinks he probably shouldn’t, but he’s confused about this entire situation. “Look, Wedge, sorry, this is awkward, but as your CO I have to know – when can he have his flight clearance back?”

“When he’s gone four weeks incident-free, and not a moment before,” Dr Monri replies. “And I’ve signed off on it. I suspect we are looking at six-to-eight weeks. Wedge?”

“That sounds about right.” He sighs. “Sorry Luke. It’s for everyone’s safety.” Wedge is fidgeting with his hands again, picking at his nails, and Elan picks a piece of flimsi and a stylus off her desk and hands it to him, and then gives him a book to lean on. He glances at Luke and then starts putting marks to paper.

It’s abundantly clear that he’s drawing Luke, and Luke just looks on mystified. “Actually, Luke – I do need to speak to you, but would it be possible for you to swing by later? I think Wedge and I need to talk first.”

“Yeah, sure.” Luke stands up. He clasps a hand on Wedge’s shoulder. “Stay safe, okay. I’ll see you later.”

Wedge draws on, barely cognisant of Luke’s presence. As Luke leaves, door falling closed behind him, he hears Dr Monri say, “Are you sure you don’t want to take that medical discharge?”

.

Wedge might not be able to fly, but that doesn’t stop him from being an active participant in every other part of squadron life. Dr Monri had explained to Luke that the most important thing he can do is to keep a routine for Wedge, make sure he sleeps and eats properly, so Luke attempts to keep the squadron on schedule for the first time in its life.

It’s surprisingly hard, but easier after the first week, when everyone’s getting on board and used to it; drills at oh-eight-hundred hours, patrol from twelve-hundred to eighteen-hundred. It won’t last forever; the life of a fighter pilot is unpredictable at best. But Luke watches Wedge closely these days, and he seems better for it.

Wedge is still not the best at taking care of himself, so Luke finds himself dragging his friend out of their shared office when he finds Wedge still in there working, long past the time they’d agreed everyone should stop.

“Have you eaten?” Luke asks, well aware he’s sounding like a mother hen but not trusting for a second that Wedge has. A shake of the head confirms Luke’s suspicions. “To the mess hall with you, then.”

“No,” Wedge says, and Luke stops. “Urgh. Sorry. No, food is okay, but I can’t face the place.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “Fuck. I’m sorry Luke.”

“Hey.” Luke leans over to take Wedge’s hand, pull it away from where he’s dangerously close to tearing his own hair out. “I’ll go get something for you. And you can eat in our quarters. How about that? Sound manageable?”

Wedge considers it for a moment. “Yeah. I can do that. If you would do that for me.”

Luke really doesn’t mind; he hates seeing Wedge like this, and will happily do anything he can to help Wedge out. Dr Monri had made it quite clear that there was no miracle cure, no amount of therapy or medication that would ever make Wedge ‘normal’, that he’d always be managing this thing, but there was a lot they could all do to help mitigate his symptoms.

So he fetches some food, and returns to find Wedge sitting on his bed, cross-legged, a notebook on his knee and a pen in hand. Wedge flicks his eyes up when the door opens, and drops the pen and moves the notebook to take the tray off Luke. Luke settles down beside his friend. He picks up the discarded notebook. “Mind if I have a look?” he asks.

“Go ahead.”

Luke opens the book. He’s seen Wedge drawing a lot, it’s something he does – a coping mechanism, Luke now understands. But he had no idea that Wedge was actually any good. Luke’s own likeness stares back at him, bright-eyed and intense; on another page, Hobbie, Wes and Tycho jump out at him. There’s technical drawings of X-Wings and Y-Wings and A-Wings, helmet designs that Luke recognises. A page of just hands in motion. And Luke. More of Luke. From every angle, in about every outfit Luke owns. “You’re good,” Luke gasps. “Really good. Do I really look like that?” He finds himself resting on a portrait of him, with a soft smile, that Wedge seems to have taken a little more time over than some of the other sketches in this book.

“To me, you do.” Wedge uses his fork to gesture at his footlocker. “There’s more in there, if you want to look. This is just the most recent.”

Luke finds half a dozen notebooks stashed there. He lifts them out and carefully flicks through them. It’s possible to date them just from the faces that appear in them, people who are long dead. He has to stifle a sob when Biggs turns up; it takes Wedge a few tries, but he manages to capture Biggs’s wry smile with a deftness that makes Luke ache for the loss of Biggs. And then Luke shows up again, again and again and again, Wedge clearly determined to work out his face, how to try and capture his spirit.

“You draw me a lot,” Luke comments.

When Wedge doesn’t reply, Luke lifts his eyes and finds Wedge blushing.

“I like it,” Luke says. “Though I still think you might have taken liberties with how pretty I am.”

“Not at all.”

Luke leans across and kisses Wedge. It’s hardly the first time he’s done that. But this time it’s backed up with quiet desire, and a want for _more_ , because this beautiful man is battling so much and still, still doesn’t know how wonderful he is.

.

Wedge gets his flight clearance back seven weeks and two days after his incident in the hangar.

Luke takes him out, just the pair of them in their X-Wings, to check that Wedge’s flying skills are up to scratch; it’s pretty clear that they are, but Luke has them stay out for the full length of their allotted time, playing around and having fun under the guise of testing every part of Wedge’s flying skill.

He’s mindful of how Wedge said that flying helps, that it clears his brain and for those moments, it feels like he’s normal.

When they return, Wedge is exuberant with joy and twirls Luke around in an embrace, whilst the rest of the squadron converge and envelop them both in a group hug, glad to have Wedge back.

.

They’re all better about managing Wedge, these days. It’s a collective effort, one that Luke spearheads but is backed up by the rest of Rogue Flight. Wedge’s bad days are spotted and dealt with before they blow up to become issues. He’s still antsy sometimes, but Tycho will tug him off to the gym to run laps, or Wes will take him for target practice. When his brain won’t stop replaying his mistakes, Hobbie will sit with him and talk about the good old times, when they were just kids trying to do what they could for the Rebellion.

And Luke? Luke is besides Wedge in all things, these days.

That means giving him space sometimes, and picking him up and refusing to let him wallow at others. Luke learns Wedge’s hiding places, and how to tuck in there with him and just hold him whilst Wedge watches the world go by. He’ll drag Wedge away from his work and back to bed, redirect Wedge’s intensity onto pleasing Luke and then echoing it back up at him.

It turns out that sex is a good way to break Wedge out of his worst moments, and that works for both of them.

Luke holds Wedge as they fall asleep, comforted by each other. Wedge usually wakes first, and Luke becomes accustomed to waking to the scratching of Wedge’s pen, Wedge finding a new angle to draw Luke from, another piece of him that he hasn’t studied in detail.

(There’s an entire separate notebook that isn’t fit for public consumption these days.)

He still has bad days; he’ll always have bad days. But he works through them. He’s got people to turn too, knows how to fight, and when he needs to just step away from it all.

When the war is over, maybe he’ll have a chance to live a normal life. The cost of freedom for the galaxy, though, is a price Wedge thinks is worth paying. He’ll soldier on through the bad times. One day, it’ll be worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Wedge’s diagnosis isn’t discussed in fic – and the GFFA would probably have different terms – but he’s probably on the autistic spectrum, and borderline ADHD. Probably. (Cases like this where things are co-morbid and present without the full impairment you typically see are notoriously tricky to diagnose.)


End file.
